Tech

How Smarter Parking Technology Will Reduce Traffic Congestion

The Global Innovation Series is supported by BMW i, a new concept dedicated to providing mobility solutions for the urban environment. It delivers more than purpose-built electric vehicles — it delivers smart mobility services. Visit bmw-i.com or follow @BMWi on Twitter.

Between 8% and 74% of traffic in congested downtown areas is caused by people cruising for parking, according to a report by UCLA professor Donald Shoup who synthesized studies from 70 years of research on the subject. The paper indicates that drivers in major cities — including San Francisco, Sydney, New York and London — spend between 3.5 and 14 minutes searching for a space each time they park.

The last study Shoup included in his report ended in 2001. Today, wasted cruising time is likely longer, and it's on track to get worse. During a recent Ted Talk in March, Ford Motor Company Executive Chairman Bill Ford Jr. estimated that the number of cars on the road could go from 800 million to nearly 3 billion by 2050.

Ford also shares a solution for avoiding the gridlock that so many cars might cause (and no, it has nothing to do with reducing the number of cars on the road). What he envisions is a world in which cars are connected to each other and to cities, enabling drivers to avoid traffic, calculate exact driving time and efficiently manage parking spaces.

While the sci-fi possibilities of Ford's full vision have yet to be realized, many companies and cities have started implementing smart solutions for parking and traffic problems. What they're learning in these first steps may help shape the future of smart driving.

Smart Parking Technology

The city of Los Angeles recently installed low-power sensors and smart meters to track the occupancy of parking spaces throughout the Hollywood district, one of its most congested areas. The sensors are about the size of a coffee cup lid and are embedded in the asphalt. The smart meters attach to regular meters and allow users to pay with their mobile phones in addition to communicating payment information to the city.

With the information from the sensors, the city is able to change pricing on its parking depending on demand — raising it for a special event or a particularly busy hour, for instance. The information also alerts enforcement officials about expired parking meters or other parking violations and reduces the time they spend driving in circles.

Drivers can also access information gathered by the sensors through a free app called Parker. The app alerts drivers where there they are or are not likely to find an available parking space so that they can save time cruising around.

The city of Los Angeles saw a return on its investment within three months, according to Streetline, the company that created the technology. Similar programs have been implemented in Sausalito, California, Washington, D.C., Salt Lake City and Roosevelt Island in New York City. The University of Maryland recently installed the sensors to keep track of which electric car charging stations are vacant.

Streetline Vice President Kelly Schwager says parking is just the tip of the iceberg, and the company plans to help create around smart cities and traffic management.

"Once you have this infrastructure of sensors throughout a city, you can use these networks in a number of different ways," she says. "We’re starting in parking today, but eventually you can envision this being used for measurement of pollution or to detect if a water pressure system in a fire hydrant is operating at the right pressure or if a streetlight bulb needs to be replaced. ... there are lots of smart city applications that can be built on top of this."

Crowdsourcing Parking and Traffic Information

Installing Streetline's sensors is an expensive prospect at about $20 to $30 per sensor per month. Even if the technology does eventually result in savings, as it did in Los Angeles, it's not a line item that most city governments can slip into their budgets. But several other companies have taken an approach to improving congestion that relies not on installing technology but rather on crowdsourcing information.

Brooklyn-based Roadify, for instance, awards users with "StreetCARma points" for spotting parking spots for the community. Users enter the address of a spot that they are about to leave or one that they happen to walk by. Other users nearby will see that spot on the app if they search the area.

Since Roadify's launch in November 2009, about 40,000 spots have been "given" in New York. The parking aspect admittedly has a ways to go before it becomes a real-time parking space map, but the concept has helped the company expand to an app that helps users avoid traffic jams, navigate subway delays and track buses as well. While the non-parking categories are based on data provided by the city, crowdsourcing enhances them.

"Numbers are great, but they lack a certain amount of information," explains Dylan Goelz, Roadify's head of user experience. "A sensor can tell me that at this one point on the Brooklyn Bridge [traffic] is going so many mph, but 10 feet in front of it, it might be going 0 [mph]."

The same inconsistencies apply in posted and actual bus schedules and subway delays.

Another startup, Waze, crowdsources traffic information, but it doesn't rely on user reports to do so. The app automatically crowdsources road maps and traffic information by tracking where its users drive with the app open. If drivers in a specific area slow down, the app automatically detects and displays a traffic jam to warn other drivers. Drivers stuck in the jam can choose to actively report it and upload photos from their phone, in addition to the automatically transmitted information.

City-Led Initiatives

Unless it had massive adoption rates, Roadify's app wouldn't be as useful without city data. As more cities open their databases to the public, the number of applications designed for navigating transportation and traffic like Roadify is bound to increase.

New York City started a competition in 2010 to award apps that use city databases. Roadify won this year's grand prize, and transportation apps in general were well represented. Third place winner Best Parking provides parking information by address. Honorable mention NextStop tells users when their next subway train will arrive.

Eventually San Francisco's database will include some information that Roadify developers are looking forward to integrating — the city is currently testing smart meters and sensors at 6,000 of its 25,000 metered parking spaces. Similar to the Streetline solution in Los Angeles, it will use the information it gathers to adjust parking rates based on demand.

"We know it is going to happen, we're happy to see it come," Goelz says. "But in the meantime everyone has a role to play if they want to make it smarter."

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The Global Innovation Series is supported by BMW i, a new concept dedicated to providing mobility solutions for the urban environment. It delivers more than purpose-built electric vehicles; it delivers smart mobility services within and beyond the car. Visit bmw-i.com or follow @BMWi on Twitter.

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